This article was downloaded by: [141.211.32.5] On: 16 July 2015, At: 10:15 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG
Journal of Women & Aging Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjwa20
Visible Women: Tales of Age, Gender and In/Visibility, by Christine Bell a
Sojung Park & Toni Antonucci a
b
School of Social Work
b
Department of Psychology , University of Michigan , 1080 South University, Ann Arbor , MI , 48109-1106 Published online: 14 Mar 2013.
To cite this article: Sojung Park & Toni Antonucci (2013) Visible Women: Tales of Age, Gender and In/Visibility, by Christine Bell, Journal of Women & Aging, 25:2, 199-200, DOI: 10.1080/08952841.2013.760371 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08952841.2013.760371
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Journal of Women & Aging, 25:199–200, 2013 Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0895-2841 print/1540-7322 online DOI: 10.1080/08952841.2013.760371
Book Review
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Christine Bell (2012). Visible Women: Tales of Age, Gender and In/Visibility. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Inc., 370 pages. What leads older women in our society to disappear? As a self-avowed feminist and trained psychotherapist, the author pursued an understanding of the perceived phenomenona that in our society, women grow “invisible” as they age. This book explored the life stories of seven older women, as well as that of the author. These women, all 50 years of age and older, are determined to be seen, as they continue to age. While the meaning of invisibility remains intentionally undefined in Bell’s research, it offers us a rare opportunity to examine how older women themselves perceive the meaning of invisibility differently, why they feel visible or invisible in society, and also whether and why their own perception of invisibility evolves. The inductively derived theme is that the invisibility of older women essentially becomes a choice: Older women are seen and heard when they determine to be. The choice to be seen does not need to be nor should it be made at the expense of others. Over approximately 18 months, the author and seven other older women, whom she calls coresearchers, were engaged in individual e-mail exchanges with the author and group e-mail exchanges among themselves. At the outset, Bell staked out a different approach from more conventional academic research. Based on her doctoral training in narrative and life story research and drawing on a feminist and poststructural perspective, she brought two key elements into her research. First, contrary to the usual structural approach to examining issues related to women and aging, Bell allows history and the voices of women themselves to be the center of her research inquiry. Second, Bell explicitly adopts a “self-indulgent” and “subjective” approach (pp. 4–5), as opposed to the so-called scientific objectivity typical of academic journal articles. Perhaps her most innovative approach lies in the way the findings are presented: Using her professional expertise as a counselor and psychotherapist, specifically her experience with therapeutic writing as counselor, the life stories of older women became the poetic representation of conversation. The book is comprised of nine chapters. The first six present her stories, leading up to embarking on her doctoral research at the age of 63. She outlines her guiding theoretical perspective, which was undeniably in a nonconventional academic text format as she intended. Also, as one among 199
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Book Review
her research “subjects” of older women, she began with her own personal life story. Chapters 7 and 8 form the core of this book, containing the seven older women’s life stories and e-mail conversations, most of which were transformed into poems. At first glance, the poetic format of the information can be exceedingly deceiving, since an entire life story is condensed into several lines of poetry. However, these verses reveal how immense and deep (in)visibility can be as related to loss and betrayal, illness and death, role, identity and independence, sexuality and the other. This (in)visibility is reflected in their stories as related to marriage, family, parenting, work, retirement, and others. It is virtually impossible and irrelevant to find commonality in their lives. Nevertheless, what seems to emerge as a shared voice is that they do not feel like old women. The final chapter closes with the shared observation among the older women revealing that they felt heard and seen despite the profoundly different trajectories of their lives in almost all respects. This book delivers on several strong promises, both as a research method and as a valuable literature for research on women and aging. As a writing methodology, it is increasingly validated as an academic research practice. By using one’s own life in written narratives, personal stories can serve as an agent to bring about positive changes. In this book as an example, one can locate these biographical experiences within larger historical contexts, making sense differently both of ourselves and the wider world (pp. 53–54). All the coresearchers in this book shared such an experience as a materialized effect stemming from participating in the narrative research. In addition to the unique research design and representation of the findings, the concept of (in)visibility among the women provides a powerfully inspiring sociological and psychological perspective on age and gender. One of the author’s criteria, to be coresearchers, was a willingness to share their “difficult” lives. Learning about their lives, readers find themselves contemplating how aging women’s lives in our society are interwoven with social forces such as the media, the institution of marriage, and more. At the same time, we discover that the consensus among the women was that (in)visibility is personally understood and defined. As each woman made clear, it continues to evolve throughout the course of an individual’s life. More importantly, the variable meaning of (in)visibility begets a sense of freedom that enables women to choose to be seen or not seen. Sojung Park School of Social Work and Toni Antonucci Department of Psychology University of Michigan 1080 South University Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106 E-mail:
[email protected]
